The Red Grove
When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community.
What kind of world might we have, who might we become, if everyone were truly safe? What price would we pay for that kind of freedom?
There are secrets beneath every community―even those founded with the purest of intentions―secrets as strong and reaching as the roots that keep us connected to one another and anchored to home.
The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by its founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions stalking the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its boundaries. Some say the mighty redwoods keep its people safe.
Yet a man has died on the Red Grove’s sacred ground. And Luce’s mother, Gloria, has vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is utterly devoted to its mission, its rituals and history. Still, she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave Luce’s little brother, Roo, and their aunt, Gem, whose life and care in a suspended state they call everdream depend on Gloria in every way. But strange things begin to happen as Luce tries to figure out where her mother has gone. Clicks echo out from the trees, flies pound against the windows, and a strange man keeps calling on the phone. The deeper Luce digs, the more she must ask if her beloved home, the women she admires, and the stories they tell might be built on a devastating lie.
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine’s The Red Grove is a story about mothers, daughters, and sisters, about the dangers of being a woman in this world, and about the flawed, fierce choices we make to protect what we love.
PRAISE
“The Red Grove is a shimmering, hidden world, and Tessa Fontaine is ferocious in every line. Intoxicating and impossible to put down.”
—Rufi Thorpe, author of Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“Chilling and stirringly beautiful, [The Red Grove] inventively imagines the freedom of women living without fear — and at what cost.”
—Bridget Thoreson, Booklist
Named a Must-Read by People and Alta
“A deeply atmospheric, haunting, and propulsive missing-person tale. In achingly beautiful language, Tessa Fontaine illuminates the space between reality and myth, story and history, utopia and dystopia. I loved this novel.”
—Angie Kim, author of Happiness Falls
“Spellbinding.” —Alta
BEHIND THE BOOK
I surveyed dozens of women for this book, trying to understand what about their lives might be different if they never had to worry about violence.
The article I wrote for People Magazine about that process and the results is linked in the section below.
RELATED INTERVIEWS & ESSAYS
‘This World Doesn’t Exist. We don’t Live there.’
People Magazine
Tessa Fontaine’s ‘The Red Grove’ Imagines a World Without Male Violence.
Who Will Finish Your Manuscript When You Die?
Literary Hub
On the origin of Tessa’s writing group with Annie Hartnett, Rufi Thorpe, and Clare Beams.
Fear, Safety, and “The Red Grove”
Southern Review of Books
An Interview with Tessa Fontaine.
MORE TO EXPLORE
Essays & Stories
The Electric Woman
Work With Me